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It is as though upon a face carved by a savage caricaturist a monstrous burlesque of all bereavement flowed.
—William Faulkner, from As I Lay Dying
About
Poets think in lines, prose writers in sentences; the best of both work from sound to sense, with an ear for the music in their compositions. S for Sentence celebrates lyricism in prose, the play and craft at work in the artful sentence. We post a sentence a month along with comments by a guest writer on the craft that shapes it, on what makes it great. In one or two sentences.—Pearl Abraham, Editor
In a novel famous for a multi-pronged narrative perspective, this moment stands out for being beyond doubt from this particular point of view: Darl’s articulate take of his father’s grief-stricken face as they transport their mother’s decaying corpse to her hometown, to be buried with her own family. The permanence of “carved” lends a feeling of inevitability that outlasts the sentence. Whatever follows will be a clear and sober assessment; it will be etched definitively. The violence of “savage” sounds a note of truthfulness. And then the dangerously vivid metaphor takes off — the incongruous “monstrous burlesque” continues the performativity of the action followed by the mournfulness of “all bereavement flowed” which offers a process of understanding death as never ending. “Flowed” indeed feels like it’s still flowing.
—Philip Dean Walker's new collection is Better Davis and Other Stories (Squares and Rebels, May 2021)
—Philip Dean Walker's new collection is Better Davis and Other Stories (Squares and Rebels, May 2021)